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New Chuck Taylor sneakers.
mood: 
Wy do you ask?
Wy do you ask?--
Clive Matson reads from
Mainline to the Heart and Other Poems
June 15
6-7pm poetry workshop, 7:30pm reading followed by open mic
both events are free
Sacramento Poetry Center
1729 25th Street
Mainline to the Heart and Other Poems
June 15
6-7pm poetry workshop, 7:30pm reading followed by open mic
both events are free
Sacramento Poetry Center
1729 25th Street
This new edition of Clive Matson's early poems includes all of Diane di Prima's "Poets Press" version -- 1,000 copies were sold out in 1966-67 -- and adds significant uncollected pieces from the same period. At once obstreperous and innocent, these poems celebrate a place where emotion, sex, and religion come together with overwhelming intensity.In the 50s and 60s, Beat Generation writers were revisiting this edgy, full-blooded romantic tradition and Matson joined the exploration with youthful energy. But the quest was fraught with tension. Mainline to the Heart and Other Poems expresses a confluence of personal and historical forces, showing the difficulty and joy of coming of age at the same time the culture was at the height of its 1960s explosion.
Clive Matson arrived in NYC in 1960. He quickly fell in with the Beat Generation – his first event was a reading where he met Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Diane di Prima. Herbert Huncke became his second father. Diane di Prima published Matson’s first poems. He returned to school and earned his MFA in poetry at Columbia. He has taught more than 3,000 workshops nationwide, and his how-to text Let the Crazy Child Write! (New World Library, 1998), honoring the creative unconscious, is being used by a number of groups around the world. Matson co-edited, with the late Allen Cohen, the anthology An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind - Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press, 2002), which won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award. His seventh book, Squish Boots (2002), was placed, amazingly, in John Wieners’ coffin. Chalcedony’s First Ten Songs (2007) is his current enthusiasm, a passionate, erotic and spiritual voice evolved from the Mainline poems. Mostly Matson writes from the itch in his body.
--
Do try and make that, if you're anywhere near. Matson is a gifted poet and teacher.
My own reading had me wander across this today.
--
EVERY LIFE
Mary Buchinger
begins
with a map of this day
dark
growing into light
drawn back
again to
dark
the arc
the apocalyptic
all but brush
up against
each other
black shine
mirror
of a seed
reveals the grain
of sun
rains
green
to gold season
back to rich rot
black
map of stone
from wet hot
lava
ends too
soft and broken
as dust
ready to be wet
again
the map
grows full
grows
simple
--
Notice that this poem is somewhat DNA-shaped. Fitting, yes?
I'll leave you with one of mine, below, for no particular reason.
All Good Things - Jobe
--
The List
James Lee Jobe
Rain. The sun and the moon. The strange things
that my cat does. New Chuck Taylor sneakers.
The sound of birds. A high-scoring basketball game
that comes down to the last shot. When dark clouds
part just enough to let a beam of light through.
My children laughing together. Celtic music.
When the chalice at church is lit. Rivers.
That hopeful look in a friendly dog's eye. Tule fog.
Salted Pretzels. The courage of the elderly.
Reading William Stafford's poems out loud
when no one else is home. Sequoia trees.
Listening to people speak Gaelic. Watching movies
with my wife. French fries. Things I love.
--